My advice:INDEXing a poor-performing query is like putting sugar on cat food. Yeah, it probably tastes better but are you sure you want to eat it?The path of least resistance can be a slippery slope. Take care that fixing your fixes of fixes doesn't snowball and end up costing you more than fixing the root cause would have in the first place.

My advice:INDEXing a poor-performing query is like putting sugar on cat food. Yeah, it probably tastes better but are you sure you want to eat it?The path of least resistance can be a slippery slope. Take care that fixing your fixes of fixes doesn't snowball and end up costing you more than fixing the root cause would have in the first place.

TomThomson (4/3/2014)You can have it fast, cheap, or right - pick only one of the three.

I thought that was 2 of 3? When did this change? I don't remember seeing the memo?

Well, there is an interesting paradox: if you pick "right" as the one of the three you insist on, you stand a chance of getting it fast and cheap, so you can sometimes get all three. But if you start from cheap it will go wrong, and take a long time to fix, which may ead to budget overruns so aiming for cheap won't deliver fast or right and is rather unlikely to deliver cheap, and if you start from "fast" and want 2 man years work done in 2 days and put hundreds of people on it with no time to plan the work or coordinate the many teams you are pretty well guaranteed an expensive and buggy result that isn't available until long after you wanted it. So the only one of the three you should pick is "right" and then you may get the other two as well, whereas if you pick either of the others you will probably get none of the three.

However, non-technical managers (and most technical managers too, in fact) don't understand this, so they have to be offered the choice - and allowing them to pick two of the three guarantees failure, so they should only be allowed to choose one so that there's at least some chance of success. I've even known an accountant pick "get it right" as his preferred option, so there's always some chance if you restrict them to one of the three.

My advice:INDEXing a poor-performing query is like putting sugar on cat food. Yeah, it probably tastes better but are you sure you want to eat it?The path of least resistance can be a slippery slope. Take care that fixing your fixes of fixes doesn't snowball and end up costing you more than fixing the root cause would have in the first place.

TomThomson (4/3/2014)You can have it fast, cheap, or right - pick only one of the three.

I thought that was 2 of 3? When did this change? I don't remember seeing the memo?

Well, there is an interesting paradox: if you pick "right" as the one of the three you insist on, you stand a chance of getting it fast and cheap, so you can sometimes get all three. But if you start from cheap it will go wrong, and take a long time to fix, which may ead to budget overruns so aiming for cheap won't deliver fast or right and is rather unlikely to deliver cheap, and if you start from "fast" and want 2 man years work done in 2 days and put hundreds of people on it with no time to plan the work or coordinate the many teams you are pretty well guaranteed an expensive and buggy result that isn't available until long after you wanted it. So the only one of the three you should pick is "right" and then you may get the other two as well, whereas if you pick either of the others you will probably get none of the three.

However, non-technical managers (and most technical managers too, in fact) don't understand this, so they have to be offered the choice - and allowing them to pick two of the three guarantees failure, so they should only be allowed to choose one so that there's at least some chance of success. I've even known an accountant pick "get it right" as his preferred option, so there's always some chance if you restrict them to one of the three.

I am printing this in size 36p font and putting it on the wall of my office.

TomThomson (4/3/2014)You can have it fast, cheap, or right - pick only one of the three.

I thought that was 2 of 3? When did this change? I don't remember seeing the memo?

Well, there is an interesting paradox: if you pick "right" as the one of the three you insist on, you stand a chance of getting it fast and cheap, so you can sometimes get all three. But if you start from cheap it will go wrong, and take a long time to fix, which may ead to budget overruns so aiming for cheap won't deliver fast or right and is rather unlikely to deliver cheap, and if you start from "fast" and want 2 man years work done in 2 days and put hundreds of people on it with no time to plan the work or coordinate the many teams you are pretty well guaranteed an expensive and buggy result that isn't available until long after you wanted it. So the only one of the three you should pick is "right" and then you may get the other two as well, whereas if you pick either of the others you will probably get none of the three.

However, non-technical managers (and most technical managers too, in fact) don't understand this, so they have to be offered the choice - and allowing them to pick two of the three guarantees failure, so they should only be allowed to choose one so that there's at least some chance of success. I've even known an accountant pick "get it right" as his preferred option, so there's always some chance if you restrict them to one of the three.

You know, I think it's both interesting and sad that no matter where we are in the world, no matter what industry we work in, no matter who we work with, the problems we all face are so similar. The original video was a humorous look at things, but what makes it so funny is that it's all too real and has probably happened to all of us more that a few times. We get that strange "you can't be serious" look in our face and then we realize that they are. Of course, should have been done yesterday, cost the stakeholder absolutely nothing and work faster than blazes - nearly instantaneous.

Aside from the impossibility factor, people feel the need to take so much time talking about it and when it's all said and done, we're still left wondering if there was a straight answer in there anywhere. No matter what our specialty, the problems we deal with every day are so very common. The cool part is that we get things done.